More On the Biofuel Hubbub

As you may recall, March's eco-article focused on the questionable merits of biofuels.

Interestingly, I got exactly two emails, one that agreed that biofuels are not as awesome as we were promised and one that maintained that there is an incredible future in biofuels. Here are a rundown of their responses:

Christopher Calder in Eugene, Oregon wrote in his email, "It is worse than you think," and supported this with a plethora of links:

This is a Grist Mill news article about the economic feasiblity of cellulose-based ethanol. Here is the full study cited in the article.

This this is Christopher's web page "The biofuel hoax is causing a world food crisis!" It's a very intense page full of information and opinion. He also maintains a food crisis news link page that's pretty expansive.

Adhemar Altieri in São Paulo, Brazil wrote to me and asked me to take a very critical look at the Searchinger study I sited in my eco-article, pointing out that the study might have omitted information that could have had a serious impact on the study's bleak anti-biofuel conclusion. He pointed out that "Ethanol works" in Brazail and, "has worked for decades." He went on to say that "it is large-scale, cost-efficient, sustainable and energy-efficient" producting "9 units of new energy produced for each unit of fossil fuel burned in its production."

Both of these points of view are exceptionally enlightening and cause for serious debate. I've been personally pondering this issue as food costs continue to increase, especially since I heard this story on NPR this morning.

There is a lot of potential in the field of biofuels ... If only we can get it right.